9 ms·
Scorching Summer in Europe Signals Long-Term Climate Changes
- abootstrapper 8y agoWhat we need is for carbon sequestration to become a profitable industry.
- maxxxxx 8y agoIs there even a viable approach for this on a large scale?
- baq 8y agoYeah plant forests instead of cutting them down. Also it doesn't matter when the high albedo ice on the poles melts.
- chrischen 8y agoYou need to cut them down to sequester them and also to make room for new trees. The carbon remains sequestered as long as you do not burn it or let it decay.
- ithkuil 8y agoInteresting. So a forest in equilibrium emits (dead trees rotting) the same amount of co2 than what it uses via photosynthesis?
- rypskar 8y agoYes, growing and composting is part of the natural CO2 cycle. The problem is not CO2 in it self, but all the extra we humans add to the natural cycle. I like to think of it as having a glass with a hole in the bottom, as long as the stream in is the same as the stream out the level stay the same. Adding to the stream in or making the hole smaller will change the level and in the end overfill and spill
- HarryHirsch 8y agoAt the moment Colorado is going the opposite direction, forests are turning into grasslands.
- tspike 8y agoWhat parts of Colorado? If you look at a picture of Boulder from 1900 and one from today, the difference is striking. True tallgrass and shortgrass prairies are among the most endangered ecosystems on the planet.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoIt's the Front Range that's badly affected, winters aren't as cold as they used to be, and as a result the Montain Pine Beetle is expanding its range. The weakened pine forests are a fire hazard.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoYes. We can realistically capture and store permanently many Gigatonnes of CO2 per year. It involves capture of CO2 from concentrated point sources (power plants, chemical plants, metal and cement factories etc) and transport to permanent geological storage. We have all the tech and know how to scale up. The only problem is that it's pure cost, no short-term benefit, so no company will do it voluntarily.
- graeme 8y agoThis would slow the rate of emissions, but not eliminate them or suck any extant CO2 from the atmosphere, correct?
- lisper 8y agoRight. But it's a start.
- StavrosK 8y agoHow much sequestration would we need to do to actually reverse the effect, and why can't we? I know why we won't, at least...
- lisper 8y agoTo actually reverse climate change (as opposed to simply slowing or stopping its further progress), we'd need to go back to pre-industrial CO2 levels. That's not physically impossible, but it is (almost certainly) politically and economically impossible, at least with current technology and politics. Cheap solar and coming to our senses about nuclear power (i.e. promoting it) could make a big dent. So it's not hopeless. But it's sure not going to be easy.
- StavrosK 8y agoAh, wow, pre-industrial? So there's no leeway at all? You mean we'd have to go back to pre-industrial emissions levels, or actually sequester all the carbon we emitted all these decades? Luckily, cheap solar seems to be coming, and electric cars are hopefully becoming more widespread as well. Nuclear is a different story, unfortunately that one doesn't seem to be very palatable to the average person, even though it sounds like a silver bullet.
- rinze 8y ago"The world is going to hell, almost literally" "We just need to figure out how to make money while avoiding it" Which pretty much sums up why we are here.
- chrischen 8y agoWell if you can give up your job, say no to money, then we wouldn’t be here.
- mikeash 8y agoIt does, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
- PeterisP 8y ago"We just need to figure out how to make money while avoiding it" is just other words for "To achieve X, we need to figure out (and implement) an incentive structure so that people would benefit from doing stuff that facilitates X, which is pretty much the only way to get them to do it".
- mirimir 8y agoThe problem is that carbon sequestration costs more now. Although it would arguably reduce future costs, there doesn't seem to be a workable economic mechanism for linking that to the present. I'm certainly no economist, but the current situation seems clear enough.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- laurentl 8y agoWhat’s most striking in this article is the disconnect between the gravity of the situation and the ecological impact of “economically efficient” local solutions such as flying in workers from Thailand and lettuce from L.A. Seriously, flying in 30000 heads of lettuce from half the world away to honor a contract with a supermarket? I can understand that it’s the “right” local solution (most likely the only way to avoid bankruptcy for the farmers), but from a global perspective this is utterly crazy.
- zavi 8y agoBut I like lettuce.
- ryanx435 8y agoToo bad. the environmentalists know better than you and lettuce is killing the planet. /s
- 21 8y agoDo you think bananas sold in Europe are grown locally? Compared to all the stuff flown around, one extra shipment is a drop in the bucket.
- rfinney 8y agoGreece produces bananas. (source : https://en.actualitix.com/country/wld/banana-producing-countries.php https://en.actualitix.com/country/wld/banana-producing-count... page 10) Iceland used to produce bananas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_production_in_Iceland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_production_in_Iceland
- 21 8y agohttps://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/bananas_en https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/bananas_en: European citizens are major banana consumers, making the European Union (EU) the world’s biggest importer of bananas from Latin America (nearly 70%) and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries (around 19%). The EU's own production of bananas amounts to around 11%.
- cool_look 8y agoFunny how the freezing snap at the beginning of the year March-April was put down to “weather” and a hot spell is put down to “climate change”. Both most plausibly have the root in the same phenomenon of oceanic cooling mucking around with the various wind systems like the gulf stream. Time will tell if this is a blip or a trend. Last heatwave is 1976.. 42 years. If we have a heatwave that frequently it is not really a problem is it ? Hot June was 18th hottest of 350 records from the longest temperature record. Lets see how hot July was against the 350 year record first. Discount more modern locations with short history or tarmacced sub standard placement ( Heathrow airport for instance )
- jpfr 8y ago> Time will tell if this is a blip or a trend. Which (measureable) criterion needs to be fulfilled so that you would acknowledge this as a trend?
- cool_look 8y agoHeatwaves need to become more clustered. At the moment we get them every so often at roughly the same rate we always did. As mentioned June ( very hot ) was 18th out of 350. There were 17 other hotter Junes in 350 years... many pre industrial revolution and therefore immune from CO2 considerations.
- not_kurt_godel 8y agoIt is a trend. You are deluding yourself if you do not believe the overwhelming scientific concensus on that conclusion.
- jacoblsievers 8y agoAnd anyway, its not really about the outliers. The trend seems clear: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/graph_data/Temperature_Anomalies_over_Land_and_over_Ocean/graph.png https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/graph_data/Tempera...
- hourislate 8y agoIs there anywhere on earth where the weather can be considered normal or not changing much from the norm? Just curious where the best or last habitable areas would be? Perhaps New Zealand?
- 21 8y agoI bet Sahara is pretty constant all the time :) EDIT: Spoke too soon: https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/videos/snow-covers-sahara-fourth-time-37-years https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/videos/sno...
- user5994461 8y agoIt's actually really not. A few thousand years ago, it was a tropical forests and it will be again within a few thousand years.
- mirimir 8y agoYeah, I've read that too. So maybe the US Southwest will go total desert. And maybe even the Amazon. But the Sahara could become tropical forest again. I don't recall mechanistic details. Something about atmospheric standing waves, I think.
- meiraleal 8y agoBrazil.
- robocat 8y agoIf the global economy shuts down, then you would get eaten in New Zealand. Anywhere with mountains should be OK since temperature drops x degrees for every y meters above sea level.
- patient_zero 8y agocool story incoming: I'm new here, and i was wondering if there would be climate change denier accounts here, just like the shitty news aggregation\commenting site that i left behind. sure enough they are here! commenting as they will on how the Titanic is doing 'just fine' and insisting we 'wait and see' how it turns out. i suppose I'm not surprised, but i had hoped things would be different.
- discreteevent 8y agoAnd as someone commented on a previous thread here, their presence with trolling arguments causes the thread to become 'contentious' so the HN algorithm knocks it off the front page. I've no doubt that for some of the trolls that is the objective. It's a pity because this is probably the most important issue of our time and it's going to take an engineering/scientific approach to solve it - so I think it's highly relevant to HN. There are some sharp minds on here. It should be hotly debated and the ranking algorithm should be able to take the heat.
- ulisesrmzroche 8y agoWe have the technology and solutions. We’ve had them since the 80s. We need to change the culture to make the necessary sacrifices to get things done but, as you can see, human nature is hard to change.
- brian-armstrong 8y agoIt didn't used to be that way. The change happened 2-3 years ago. I think a lot of this ultimately comes down to poliitical polarization - people feel that if they don't agree entirely with progressive policies, then they must be conservative, and the climate change denial follows. I think there has been an effort to "de-Bay Area" hn for better or worse (there was a time when general SF news was somewhat germane and topical here, but no longer)
- meiraleal 8y agoI'm surprised that today I read at least 3 comments and some articles about "denialism". Is it the new frontier of the "fascists against anti-fascists" war? I do believe that there is a lot of things coming from mainstream media we have to dismiss, and it seems some of these things are now been publicly defended against public discredit. The same way the mass media lie to us today, their ancestors lied to ours. It is natural and healthy to pursuit lies of the past, it is a shame that some people are trying to put it as a negative behavior.
- barking 8y agoIn the last 12 months we've had tropical storms, siberian-like snowstorms and now a long hot summer. It's certainly been more interesting than our usual grey wet summers and grey wet winters.
- StavrosK 8y agoAnd over here in Greece, we get sudden rains every day, whereas we used to not get a drop for three or four months. The change is really striking, and it does not bode well at all.
- barking 8y agoYes it's a bit scary wondering where it will end (except to say I wouldn't mind if all our summers here were like this one.)
- mirimir 8y agoYes, increasingly chaotic weather is expected with GCC. There's more water vapor in the troposphere, and so more energy is available from condensation.
- barking 8y agoIt does seem as if when it rains it rains heavier than it used to.
- mirimir 8y agoIf you want an amusing (and yet depressing) perspective, I recommend Peter Watts' Echopraxia. One of the background themes is how much energy they need to pump sulfates into the stratosphere, in order to prevent catastrophic GCC-driven wildfires. Given the current heatwave around the northern hemisphere, it seems that reality is catching up.
- anothergoogler 8y ago> catastrophic GCC-driven wildfires Is that an undocumented option?
- mirimir 8y agoIsn't that gcc? ;) But yes, I ought to have said "global-climate-change-driven". Rather a mouthful, though.
- F3Life 8y agoThis seems as good a place as any to tell HN about my business: We provide systems to banks to help them include activities which mitigate climate risk into credit agreements, and evidence of compliance into credit scores. It provides a nudge for bank clients to adopt practices which both mitigate climate change and build resilience to climate-related weather shock. We're a fintech biz built on the fundamental insight that environmental damage, including climate change, is hardwired into the design of the credit system, because issue of credit is blind to resource overuse/abuse, creating a systemic perverse incentive for environmental degradation. If you're interested in finance, tech and concerned about climate change, I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. 2 further points: 1. HN was the community that gave me the confidence to launch this business. 2. Through our learning experience, we have discovered that banks are already reducing exposure to agricultural lending due to concerns about weather shock. Where farmers can't get access to credit, their production can drop 75%. Although we are only in the foothills of climate change, our financial system will amplify its impact. There may be technological fixes for high value cash crops grown in controlled environments. Not so sure about staples.
- thecolorblue 8y ago> There may be technological fixes for high value cash crops grown in controlled environments. Can you expand on this? I have felt the same way, and have a good understanding of the tech problem to be solved, but I'm having trouble selling the idea to any buyer. Would you attempt to anticipate crop price spikes and plant ahead of time?
- F3Life 8y agoBy technological fixes in agriculture, I simply mean greenhouses and fertigation systems. Control the environment in which plants grow more closely and thereby mitigate risks associated with weather shock. Works great for things like capsicum, high value lettuce etc. I don't see how this can be replicated for things like wheat and maize, although admittedly GM crops potentially offer some route to solving this problem.
- 8y ago
- JustMatthew 8y agoKorea is experiencing the hottest summer ever in recorded history, but Korean summers have always been hot, humid and uncomfortable, so while it's definitely more uncomfortable than usual, it isn't causing too much turmoil. For parts of the world like Europe where such extreme temperatures have been relatively rare, it will be extremely interesting - not to mention super unfortunate - to see how long it will take for individuals and societies to adjust to what very well may be a new normal and/or how it may impact migration (both in and out) patterns.
- hkai 8y agoHow is the hot summer in Europe indicative of a long-term climate change more than Donald Trump saying "see, it's snowing outside! I told you there's no climate change!"
- JustMatthew 8y agoYou have a point, I could have qualified my post with an 'if these hot temperatures continue in Europe' to hedge since the effects of climate change don't necessarily appear as super-linear phenomenon - there is scope for significant variation.
- graeme 8y agoThe extent of the heatwaves is the difference. I saw a map showing that basically the whole world has above average temperatures this summer - past heat waves tended to be local. Much like a local record snowfall.